Direct X 10/11 Question - Answer (Translated)

[Jennestia]

i just hope one thing, and one thing only, right after 1.18 and a few tweakings, i hope 1.19 is the damn OPTIMIZATION for PC users! i mean, come on, im playing on a decent PC and its lag so much when rendering all the ppl who pass by me!

Define "decent pc", as I don't have this issue. I only get bad lag with AO on.

[Elkwood]

Define "decent pc", as I don't have this issue. I only get bad lag with AO on.

Jennesta you are so full of crap.

I have a 1090t
8GB of RAM
GTX 470
SSD HDD

XIV Still lags on it when it writes files to the HDD, I am sorry there is something wrong with the coding in this game.

[Rentahamster]

Define "decent pc", as I don't have this issue. I only get bad lag with AO on.

AO would run a lot better in a DX11-optimized environment.

[Elexia]

Jennesta you are so full of crap.

I have a 1090t
8GB of RAM
GTX 470
SSD HDD

XIV Still lags on it when it writes files to the HDD, I am sorry there is something wrong with the coding in this game.

Here's my specs on my media PC I play XIV on:

http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1877781

XIV may be badly coded, but it's well documented that AO and certain Draw distance settings are the culprits on poor performance. Given your responses to her in general because you went off on a tangent to say ATI is a failure of a card she said otherwise and said that she had problems with Nvidia, I don't find your response to her surprising.

The main bit of lag I get is the server delay, which is quite different from machine lag.

[Suirieko]

Jennesta you are so full of crap.

I have a 1090t
8GB of RAM
GTX 470
SSD HDD

XIV Still lags on it when it writes files to the HDD, I am sorry there is something wrong with the coding in this game.

I have 1090t
8GB of Ram
and ATI Radeon 5880

and I never have any lag issues as well. I only had problem when I had AO on, but when I turned it off, FFXIV ran damn nearly problem free, and most definitely lag free.

I am sorry there may be something wrong with the computer for you to have lag issues, especially considering you have an SSD hard drive.

[OJtheLIONKing]

I don't see why people are treating a possible DX10/11 upgrade as being completely exclusive of DX9. Many games I've recently played, including DA2, Shogun 2 and WoW, have options for both. For the first two, this support was added after the game launched, with no pressing reason to, but as a service to fans who bought the game who have higher specs. Now I realize that there are higher priorities than the engine right now. The game has to be fun to play first, and I personally have high hopes for 1.18 with dungeons and auto-attack to solve a lot of that problem, but the fact is the actual process of getting leveled up is almost as dull in this game as it was in FFXI, and that will require a lot of time to fix with content.

However, the battle/quest/art designers and the tech folks aren't (or at least shouldn't) overlap. Further, optimizing Crystal Tools for PC should be a priority for SE, since that means they can port console games over with more ease. Personally I'm dying to play FFXIII on PC, but I suppose part of the reason for that is that PC ports of single player games always have mods whether they're officially supported or not, and who wouldn't want to see Snow modded so see how big a tool he'd look like if he was balding under that condom hat? <cough> Anyway, this would be an investment in the future of both FFXIV and other SE games. FFXIV's already on PC, so it's the perfect testing ground for the Crystal Tools engine before using it for ports for other games. I bet a PC release of FFXIII would offset the losses caused by all this development time, for instance.

I can't find the interview, but I recall them mentioning that, like FFXI, they made this game intentionally high spec to future-proof it. Part of future proofing is using the most current technology at the time, which they're not at the moment. My hope is that, after the PS3 launch, they have the technology group work on optimizing the engine for the next generation of systems, and have a FFXI-360 style relaunch when that's done to extend the life of the game. While they're at that, they can implement their new technology into the PC version of Crystal Tools. I think what many here are worried about is that they will never upgrade the engine (as was the case with FFXI) when most successful MMOs have upgraded their engines for newer technology after a while (see Asheron's Call, City of Heroes, Guild Wars, WoW, etc) WoW and CoH in particular have managed to keep their fairly ugly base graphics up to pace with newer games just with graphical upgrades, and I hope SE does the same in the future rather than hiding behind "PS3/DX9" limitations like they did with XI's PS2 limitations. It won't affect game balance if you add proper water tesselation effects or better optimized ambient occlusion or (gasp) the ability to alt+tab from fullscreen.

That and I want a cape. I'm dying to have a cape. Guild Wars has capes and that game's 6 years old, surely you can manage something SE.

Well, I know I tend to write essays when I post, so as I often do I'll summarize.

tl:dr I know it's not a priority now, but SE should keep the engine as upgraded as feasible as a testing bed for console>PC ports, and FFXIV will benefit from that as well. Also capes. Please add capes.

[Rentahamster]

I can't find the interview, but I recall them mentioning that, like FFXI, they made this game intentionally high spec to future-proof it.

http://www.ff14news.com/2010/07/05/i...xpo-in-europe/

[Rydin]

and ATI Radeon 5880

You mean 5850 or 5870... there is no 5880...
I actually have a similar setup....
I have the Radeon HD 5870
A high end card, yes, but not the most expensive thing in the world

See there are multiple issues that people are raising, which is why arguments go on forever on this forum... people are usually arguing 2 completely different things....
For instance:
I use a gamepad. If you go to move the camera.... and there is a delay between moving the right analog and the camera actually moving, that is control lag... that could be attributed to the graphics setting being too high, Latency introduced by your internet connection, latency from the game server or poor game optimization...
I don't experience any control lag... when I move, my character moves, when I rotate the camera, the speed at which the camera responds is instant
Control lag is usually coupled with very low frame rates
I have not gone below 40fps on 1920x1080 resolution with everything on high (Except AO off) and the frame buffer (Draw quality) set to resolution (8 out of 10)

there IS latency in the game though... it is very noticeable...
And although I am in favor of the move to DX10, It absolutely will not fix this latency....
the sluggish UI... Which has gotten better.. I remember when I would dread selling something
Buffs and debuffs last a second past the timer hitting 0:00
Switching back and forth between passive and active mode is noticeably slow... not just the animation, or that you have to stop to do it.... But it takes a second before the animation even starts

These things will not be fixed by DX10.... These are either due to the server or the Networking API of the middleware...
If you are experiencing control lag, turn your graphics settings down... especially the draw quality, possibly even the Anti-aliasing
Every game gets laggy and can crash if your system is not up to the task.... (Albeit that was never really an issue in the 2D gaming era)
What DX10 will do with compatible DX10 GPU's (Everything since the 8800GTX and Radeon HD 2400, both in Q4 of 2006 if I remember correctly) is make them run more efficiently, so your frame rates should go up.... the most improvement would be from people currently getting less than 30fps as the change could make the game feel a lot smoother
But DX10/11 wont make the game look better inherently

DX10 uses instancing, Shader model 4 and geometry. Then as a developer you'd still have to go into your game and make use of these features

[Suirieko]

People think that there's a miracle, instant solution to fix these things. There isn't. It's going to take time.

I don't experience any lag issues really, especially control lags. Any lag issues could be mostly attributed to the server-side issue, since majority of the game runs off the server more so than FFXI did. Because this is more of a network issue, I agree that DX10 will never fix that issue at all, which most people don't seem to get.

And yes I meant 5870, I couldn't remember and was too lazy to look up.

[Coldfire]

As I posted in another thread there seems to be a compiler problem with the settings for memory management which limits the usage to 2GB. I do not know if this is intentional but it reduces the ability to preload content (which is to prevent sudden stuttering from hdd-loads). Adding DX11 support is no big deal (just a few code "Find and replace" actions) but that won't optimize anything. They would have to rewrite things like AO, DoF, Physics, etc. which is alot of work if you didn't write the original code. These optimizations will be useless for the PS3 version.